


Climbing Latticework

by OLTRX



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cute, F/F, Short, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 20:36:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OLTRX/pseuds/OLTRX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Kanaya's been looking for happiness in the wrong place. Short and sweet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There’s a doll on the shelf in your closet from when you were four. It’s Spanish, you think. That was the year you and your mother went on several trips together around Europe. The head, hands, and feet are all made of white porcelain. The face is painted on in careful detail; the eyes, the eyelashes, the cheeks, the lips. The hair is a shade tanner than gold, half down the back of her dress. The dress is red, with plaid on the front and loose, lacy cuffs around the wrists. She’s beautiful. She’s always been there, but you don’t remember exactly how you got her. Maybe she was a present, or maybe something you begged your mom for. You were never really allowed to play with her, just look. She’s fragile because of the porcelain, not able to be moved around a lot. She hadn’t really served much of a purpose as a toy for you when you were younger, and she wasn’t really. She was just a doll.

You feel like that now. Not really someone with any purpose, just sitting around and trying not to bother anyone. Trying not to break. You could be porcelain right now, as far as you’re concerned. Nervous and tense and easily broken. 

You move cloth back and forth underneath the quickly moving needle of the electric sewing machine as the patterns demand. You’re making a shirt right now. Simpler than many things, just complicated enough that you don’t have room to think about anything else. But apparently your mind isn’t going to let you distract yourself that easily, because your fingers slip the cloth is jerked the wrong way. You curse and turn off the sewing machine for a minute. You’re going to have to undo the last few stitches, which might not be such a big deal or time-waster but you just really aren’t in the mood for any sort of failure right now.

It’s late, you know that. Maybe not that late for most people, but eleven at night is late for you. The clock behind you on your bedroom wall ticks out each second loudly, so you can almost feel each minute passing. 

Your room is a mess. There’s cloth everywhere, for one thing. Not clothes, because you take good care of what you wear, but cloth for sewing. A pair of scissors lies open on top of one floral heap, multiple spools of thread mount a plaid print. An empty spool lies near your foot. Your bed is covered with your homework, sheets of math and science littered across the sheets with the odd pencil every now and then, out of all of which only one working. Your shoes are on the floor, with some distance between them. The black ballet flat that belongs on your right foot is on it’s side somewhere just past the door of your room, the other one upside-down by the beaded closet entrance. 

You’re not normally like this. On any other day, your shoes would be right-side-up and next to each other on your small shoe rack inside the closet. Your cloth would be organized by color and folded into neat squares, the scissors and thread would be in the little plastic container you have set out for them. But today shit happened, and when shit happens you don’t take the time to do things that could mean thinking.

You know you should talk to your mom about it. She tries to understand, she usually does. But it’s late and she goes to bed earlier, you can’t bother her now. You don’t know what to do. Usually you drown yourself in the creative process, and you have been, but you haven’t been feeling any better. You think maybe you want to talk to someone, but you don’t know who or if you’re actually ready to think about everything yet.

You grab your phone. You don’t know if you’ve made up your mind yet, but in any case a walk should clear up your mind. You grab a scarf and kick on your shoes as you leave your room, and grab a key on the way out the front door. 

The night is brisk and dark, the trees leave shadows that are like strips of the deepest space plastered onto earth’s cement roads. You can hear every step you take, though you’ve never really been aware of your shoes making noise. 

Vriska and you have always been good friends. You kept her safe, you made sure she didn’t fuck up her life, and she came to you with her problems when she wasn’t being super stubborn and keeping them inside. You feel like there might have been something more there, the suggestion of the possibility of something stronger at the very least. But then what was that, today at lunch? Wearing the dress you made her, kissing the boy from homeroom in the hallway. Did she know how you felt? How could she not know? You were afraid you were almost being too obvious those few times, when you tried to hint at something else. Maybe she knows then, maybe she always knew and just didn’t say anything. Fine then. You just wish she could have said something, anything, to you, to not lead you on at the very least. Finding out through seeing that wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy at all. It’s hard to like someone and be growing up, with nothing figured out. Especially when you can’t even take yourself that seriously, when you know everything is just a kid thing. Everyone goes through it, but adults don’t seem to get it anymore, like they’ve forgotten. Growing up is hard. It’s hard, and nobody understands. 

You get to her house sooner than you thought you would. You recognize it immediately from the roses growing up the white-washed latticework plating the spaces in between the columns of the veranda. It’s a large house, larger than many in this town, but it’s average sized for the neighborhood. The door on the round-topped white arbor gate has been left closed, so you just reach over and slide out the lock, letting yourself in. You close it behind you and wander through the garden, finding yourself eventually under the pergola. You notice that the light in her room is on. 

How to go about it? You’re usually much classier, but you decide to grab a few small pebbles from the pot of one of the decorative plants around. You mentally cross your fingers and hope for an improved aim as you toss the first of the small stones. It ricochets off the window, a perfect hit. You wait a moment, then throw the second one. 

Finally, there’s a stirring in the lacy white curtains. She pulls aside one, peeking out through the closed window, and then she sees you. She leans over further and pushes up the window.

“Kanaya?” she says softly into the night. But you can hear it perfectly still, clear as day. She looks serious, but you can almost see a smile. She’s leaning out the window and the curtains are piled on her back, but it doesn’t seem to really matter to her. 

It’s stupid of you, but you decide that you’re going to go up there. One shoe off, then the other, and you begin to scale the latticework. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, smirking.

“Can I come in?” you ask from the top of the pergola. Walking across is the tricky part. You can feel your tongue move to one side of your mouth as you concentrate on moving across the beams that surely were never intended to bear the weight of a person. 

“Of course.” she says, slightly confused. You jump from the pergola, which is on one side of the house, to the roof of the veranda, which is on the side facing the street, also conveniently with perfect access to Rose’s window. 

“Do you mind if I climb in this way?” you ask. 

“I think that would be acceptable.” she replies, still smirking, taking a step back. You put your hands on the bottom of the frame and lift yourself, put your feet through, sit on the frame, duck under the top half of the window. You ask if you should leave it open, and she shrugs, so you do. The curtains look pretty billowing in the light breeze.

She looks nice, too, in her black pajama shorts and white t-shirt. Her hair is combed to the side, and she isn’t wearing a headband, which she usually is. No makeup, no extra decoration. She was probably going to go to sleep soon, you realize. You suddenly feel a little worse for barging in on her.

“I’m sorry for barging in on you at this hour.” you say, shifting uncomfortably. 

“It’s fine.” she says, sitting on the end of the bed. She pats the spot next her and raises an eyebrow to you. “Come on, sit down.” You do. 

There’s a quilt on her bed made from black and pink squares of fabric, sewn together with grey thread. Her whole room is like that; a mishmash of light and girly with dark and doomed. The books of dark creatures stocking the shelves, the medium sized stuffed pink pony at the foot of the bed. The pink heart on the chair used for the vanity table, the dark makeup on the vanity table. The black knitting needles, the yards and yards of pink yarn. 

“So, what’s wrong?” she asks you. You turn and look at her. Near violet eyes, a light spotting of freckles across her cheekbones and nose. 

“Today, in the hallway. Vriska and Tavros.” you say. You don’t remember making her aware of the situation, but she probably guessed based on your speech. She puts her hand on your shoulder. 

“I’m sorry.” she says, giving you a sad smile. She stands up. “Why don’t I go make us some tea? It looks like you could use it.” 

“Alright. That would be lovely.” you say. She leaves, and you take another moment to look around. Her cat creeps across the room and mews at your feet, so you pick it up, smiling slightly. It purrs as you take it into your arms, and rubs it’s head against your side. 

Rose comes back with a tea tray and pours the water from the tea-pot into the cups. You watch as she dips in the tea bags, daintily, by their strings. She scoops up some white sugar into the small spoon and brings it to her own cup, tapping twice lightly, then looking up at you.

“Sugar?” she asks. You smile.

“That would be nice, thank you.” you say, and she gives you one spoonful as well. She moves the tray to the top of her dresser for now, then sits back down next to you.

“So what exactly happened?” she asks. 

“I saw Vriska and Tavros kissing in the hall today. She was wearing the dress I made for her, maybe to impress him.” you say.

“I’m not sure he’s really interested in her.” she comments. You pull your knees up to your chest and sigh.

“I know, but it certainly seems as though she’s interested in him.” you say. She nods and lets out a breath. 

“Have you told her? That you feel strongly for her, I mean?” she asks. You shake your head.

“No.” you say. “Not really. But I thought she knew. Maybe she does and just doesn’t care? I thought that we’re good enough friends that she would at least tell me she doesn’t feel that way.” 

“Vriska can be slightly unobservant on occasion. Maybe you should tell her.” she says.

“What would it do? She clearly already likes Tavros.” you say. 

“Maybe.” she replies. “But maybe not. Maybe she’s just confused about all of this.”

“She’s always so sure about everything, though.” you say. “She never seems confused. She never regrets anything. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Maybe she never regrets and is never confused, but maybe she’d change her mind if she knew someone as great as you felt that way about her.” she says. 

“Maybe.” you say, smiling a little at the compliment. She gets up, fetching the tea tray and bringing it back to the bed. She sets it down and you each take a cup and saucer.

“I’m sorry for barging in on you so late and unexpectedly.” you say again. You take a sip. It’s nice, not extremely flavorful, but nice. 

“Oh, don’t worry about it.” she says. “My mother’s away on a business trip right now, so I suppose you could have used the front door, but you didn’t know that, and climbing up seems much more fun.”

“Oh, it’s definitely fun, but I do think I prefer the stairs.” you say. “How are you?”

“You didn’t come to check up on me, you came to have someone to talk to.” she says. 

“True, but while I’m here I think I might ask anyway.” you say. She sighs.

“I’m well.” And that’s it. That’s all she says. But you see that maybe she isn’t well. She doesn’t look very happy. Maybe she doesn’t really have any reason to be. You realize that you might want her to have one. 

“How’s your knitting going?” you ask. 

“Well.” she replies. “How’s the sewing?” 

“Likewise.” you say. The two of you talk about homework some, about teachers and classes and the interesting behavior of classmates. You don’t bring up Vriska again, she doesn’t say anything about her. You seem to stop thinking about her, at least for a little bit. 

You start to wonder why Rose isn’t happy, aside from not really having any reason to be. Lots of people can be happy without any reason, so why is this different?  
“Really though, how are you?” you ask after a moment of silence. She looks at you and tucks a strand of that sandy blonde hair behind her ear.

“Tired.” she says with a laugh. You begin to apologize, get up to leave, but she puts her hand on your wrist. “Not in such a physical sense as in a mental sense.”  
“Like being tired of something?” you ask, making sure you stay seated. 

“I suppose.” she says. 

“Is there something in particular that’s bothering you? That you’ve grown weary of?” you ask. She smiles in a kind of sad way, and you can really see. She is tired.  
“I don’t know.” she says. “I know I’m a bit too young, but everything? Just tired, in general, I suppose.” 

“I wish I could do something.” you say. She smiles a bit more, looking up at you, and you realize she’s not only tired but detached. 

“I wish you could do something too, but I think all I really need is some time.” she says. You nod and get up.

“Thank you for having me, but it’s much later than I’m usually up so I think I’ll take my leave now.” you say. She smiles.

“Do you plan on exiting through the window again?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the stairs?” 

“The stairs, I believe.” you laugh quietly. She walks you to the front door. 

“Sleep well.” she says as you exit. 

“You too.” you reply. You creep around to the back and grab your flats. Just as you’re exiting under the arbor, you hear her behind you and turn. She’s still there in the open front doorway.

“Remember what I told you– you should tell Vriska how you feel.” she says. You frown, but nod as your promise to her. Then you walk home.

The walk back to your house, to your room, to your bed is a lot lonelier than the walk to Rose’s house. You’ve talked about what was bothering you, you sat down and exchanged pleasantries with the hostess. There are no pleasantries awaiting you at home, besides possibly the comfort of your bed, once you clear it off. There is no reassuring conversation waiting, only your own thought, which hurts you. You almost wish you could have stayed at Rose’s, but you’d hate to impose on her more than you already have. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. It would only slightly delay the thought process, you think. It’s a cold walk, too. You watch the moon as you walk down the street, not full but just a sliver of it’s former glory. It’s going to get big again eventually, you know, and then it’s going to shrink and grow and shrink and grow. And all of it is just an illusion of light. It’s pale white and glowing, like a night light you had in your room when you were younger. 

There aren’t any night lights now, and your demons have changed. No longer actual monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet but problems, Vriska for one. She’s like one of your demons. 

You don’ t understand why she would kiss Tavros. She’s beaten him up at least twice before, and not even that long ago. She said she hated him, she wanted him to hate her back. She tells you a lot, but apparently there are things she’s never said or lied about. Would telling her change anything? Do you want to tell her?


	2. Chapter 2

It doesn’t matter if you tell Vriska right away or not, because there’s more to life and High School than relationships. Like recreational social gatherings on weekends, known to many of your friends as ‘parties’. You always refuse to think of them like that though, because they lack many of the typical wild teenage party factors, like alcohol that wild teens drink and loud music that wild teens listen to. You guess more than just wild teens listen to loud music though. You’d probably be listening to loud music at this ‘party’ if Feferi hadn’t somehow become responsible for the music. That’s actually how you wound up listening to lots of Taylor Swift and calm, popular music that you guess Feferi likes. 

Feferi’s pretty, you always thought so. She’s the bubbly brunette with the little bit of freckles spread across her cheeks, the one that everybody knows. Terezi’s nice looking too, you guess, though not as much as Feferi. Jade came to this party, she’s good friends with Rose and a little bit with Feferi too, and you think with some of your other friends also. She’s pretty as well, with fluffy black hair and green eyes. She’s pretty, and you guess Rose is pretty. 

You wouldn’t describe Vriska as pretty, though you guess by the literal definition it would fit. It just doesn’t suit her as a word though, you think. Maybe attractive, definitely fierce. Her hair is black and like Jade’s in many ways, but a bit messier. Her eyes are a deep, dark blue. She’s pale, and doesn’t have any freckles at all. She doesn’t wear girl clothes, but more tom-boyish things. It suits her. 

Vriska’s at this party, standing pretty close to the center of the room while Karkat rants at her and makes occasional hand motions to Tavros, who looks happy with his chair in the corner. You see Vriska roll her eye every once in a while and watch Karkat get madder and madder. He crushes his red solo cup and throws it at the ground.

Rose is also at this party. She’s talking to Jade, quietly and politely, while Jade seems to express concern for something. She’s so much calmer than Vriska. You guess you wish Vriska could be a little bit calmer, more like that. 

You’ve never really liked parties, and you certainly don’t right now. You would rather be at home, working on a new project. Maybe you could make yourself another dress, you can never have too many cool dresses. Or you could be reading that biography of Gaultier you just got. Or doing homework. Something productive, at the least. Eridan gives you a look and it just makes you want to walk away even more. Eridan’s a bit of a creep, more so since Vriska broke it off with him. They weren’t actually ever dating, but he liked her. She told him it was not mutual, and that was that. You know because she told you. What you know though she didn’t tell you is that she totally was leading him on. You know because you saw, and you hurt for him. That was before Vriska and Tavros, before you really understood what he was going through. Just because you have an extended amount of empathy with him, though, doesn’t mean you really want to talk to him, or make any sort of contact. 

You see him look over again at you, though, and you think you accidentally make eye contact. You know if he comes over there will be a really uncomfortable conversation about his chances with Vriska, and now is definitely not a good time for that. You brace yourself, and then like a savior comes Rose’s call.

“Kanaya.” she says, and you turn. One eyebrow is raised and both of her eyes are trained on you, the deep and unusual shade accentuated more by the challenging and you daresay almost bitchy, sarcastic look in them. You stand a little straighter, raise your nose a bit. You can be bitchy too, no problem.

“Yes?” you ask in return. You walk over to where she is standing and raise an eyebrow slightly. 

“Our dear friend Jade was just asking for some advice on certain matters, though that isn’t quite the point. I know you have a keen eye for fashion, I wanted to know if you’d be able to assure Jade of her dress’s marvelous quality.” Rose said. You peek at Jade’s dress, blue and shiny and not quite what you’d call marvelous but definitely it works on her.

“You look great.” you say with a smile, not a lie but not quite as specific as what Rose might have been looking for. You can tell it’s enough though, by the way Jade’s chin lifts from nearly on her chest and her cheeks lose a little of their excessive color. She looks hopeful.

“I believe in you.” Rose says, giving Jade’s arm a quick squeeze before Jade nods and lopes off somewhere. You don’t know. You don’t care that entirely much for Jade, not of her fault but because you simply don’t have great reason to like her a lot. 

Rose on the other hand is great. You care about her. Almost as much as you care about Vriska. If you were to say you had a best friend, though the term is too casual for you to use liberally, funny as it may be, she would be that best friend. 

She takes a step forward, she’s so very close to you now, and initiates conversation. You can’t tell if it’s forced or not because she seems genuinely interested in the words spewing from your mouth, but she’s always great at masking her inner emotions. That’s the worst part about her, though she doesn’t really have any bad parts. You think she’s great all around.

She says as you wrap up your small talk, “You should tell her.”

“What?” you ask, and she just smiles a bit more.

“Vriska.” she says, and you experience a mild stroke of panic and nerves. “She’s here. It’s an opportunity. If you want, I mean.” 

“No.” you say quietly. “I think I’m going to talk to her on monday.” 

“Alright.” Rose says.


	3. Chapter 3

As entirely expected, Monday comes much too quickly. You prepare yourself to talk, but as minutes pass you find yourself less and less infatuated with and fascinated by the character that Vriska is. All she really is is trouble, but you still find yourself nervous as you walk out of class and see her standing by a locker, taking up a space in front of a door that is entirely inconvenient for the room’s occupants. 

“Hello.” you say, a bit in wonder. “What are you doing here? Your next class is across the campus.”

“Well, I still have hall passing period to get there, and I cut fifth so I was just hanging around, I guess.” she says, shrugging. Always the bad girl figure. “Anyhow, Rose said you wanted to have a word?”

“So you conveniently put yourself in my path?” you ask. “You actually came here to talk to me because Rose said I might want to?” 

It’s in that moment that your brain shifts gears. There she is, big hair a’flowing and clad in knee high boots, jeans, an unbuttoned button-up over a black camisole. She cares enough to make things easy for you. She cares.

Does she feel about you the way you feel about her? 

Eridan pushes out of the classroom behind you, followed shortly by Gamzee, class clown in all the worst possible ways. Eridan curses and Gamzee, seemingly feeling strangely vindictive, grabs the front of Eridan’s shirt and pushes him up against some lockers. Eridan curses again and kicks at Gamzee’s ankle, struggling to break free, succeeding in a matter of minutes. 

Somehow, Eridan manages to collapse over onto Vriska, who curses back at him and puts a slap across his cheek. He hits her back, which he seems to realize is a big mistake a moment later when you start glaring. It is never acceptable for a male of his size to strike a female of her size, tall as though she may be compared to you. You’re all for feminism and such, but that was just not called for. 

“Take a step back, Eridan.” you say, and he gets up and brushes himself off. His nose is held a little too high for your taste, you wish you could just smack it. You were in the middle of an important conversation, he interrupted.

And then he leaves, and you turn to Vriska, but there’s no thank you or ‘you didn’t have to do that’.

“I could have handled that.” she scoffed. She looks at you, and you feel a tiny bit angry inside. It’s great that she could take care of herself, really, but why does she have to be so bitchy about it? “So what were we talking about? Oh right–”

“Never mind. I think I’ve got it all sorted out.” you say. Because you know who wouldn’t be a bitch about this. Rose wouldn’t. And she’s been there for you all the times Vriska hasn’t. You want to find her, but you know she’s too far away to get to so quickly. You rush to your next class, and you almost don’t notice Vriska looking confused and maybe a bit annoyed as she stands where you left her.

That night you slip out quietly, it’s not eleven this time but it’s definitely dark. The lights are still on in her window and you toss a stone lightly, it hits and she sees you and the window opens. You won’t be using the stairs, you feel for some reason that the latticework is perfectly appropriate.

“Kanaya?” she asks, and then smiles a little. 

“Hello, Rose.” you reply. Balance, tip toe, try not to fall. You climb in.

“So how did your talk with Vriska go?” she asks, tucking away some yarn. Her cat purrs. 

“I changed my mind.” you say.

“You didn’t talk with her?” she asks, slightly incredulously. “Kanaya, you can’t keep putting off your problems, if there’s something you need to talk about–”

You kiss her, and then you take a step back to see her reaction. She smiles and takes a step forward.

“Thank you.” she says softly and with a smile. Though the term is too casual for you to use liberally, because you don’t quite believe in casual terms, you’d say you think you want her to be your girlfriend. You want to be a strange lovely couple, with your sewing and her knitting and the doom and the darkness and the little porcelain doll from the shelf in your bedroom. 

 

There’s a row of photographs hanging along the wall of the hallway with white walls and blue trim. The first one is faded, with two happy and romantic smiles, two white dresses, two bouquets. The next is two pairs of lips kissing in front of a window with a perfect view of a street painter and a fancy bridge above a river. Somewhere a few more frames down there’s a tiny thing in a classic lacy baby carriage, her name’s Samantha and she’s the both of yours together. Then there’s her at that birthday party, her eyes are wide and you can tell from their brilliance and depth that she’s her mother’s child. She likes lacy things too, and books. Her hair’s curly and white blonde around her head. Then comes the best photo, in your opinion. You and Rose lying on a blanket and Samantha in the middle of the both of you, holding in her five-year-old arms the dark haired, dark eyed Thomas. Small, young, yours and hers both. Then there are school photos, Thomas decided to wear a tie when he was in third grade and he just never stopped. There are more, every school photo for every year, and then graduation. Samantha writes novels like her mother always wanted to but never wound up getting around to, Thomas models for vogue and doesn’t take anything too seriously. 

There’s something to be said for happiness. It can fade and it can grow, but you think, now it can never truly leave you.


End file.
